This Place Is Awesome
by socksock
Summary: You can't just go using the things you find in the bunker. The might be cursed, or have creepy stains, or something much, much worse. Like that time Kevin found a yoga mat and Dean couldn't deal with it.


Good coffee. Quality mattresses. No check out time. Not having to put on pants to have breakfast. This place was awesome.

Dean shuffled into the map room, still half asleep and hoping that someone had put the fancy coffee maker to work already. In the doorway, he came to a stop, narrowing his eyes at Kevin—or at Kevin's butt anyway, which was currently up in the air.

The fuck? This was new.

"The hell is this?"

Kevin let loose an exasperated sigh. "It's called yoga, Dean."

"Uh huh."

Kevin shifted, pulling his foot up between his hands, then rising with a wobble to a standing position with his arms thrown out. "I'm focusing my energy right now," he said, sounding for all the world as if he were quoting the label on one of Sam's vitamin smoothie drinks, "so you can shove it."

"Okay. But...why yoga?"

"Because I'm taking care of myself. Trying to be more healthy. I should exercise, and Sam wants me to go jogging with him, but there's no way I'm doing that, so..."

"So you're breathing it all in and loving it all out."

"What?"

"Never mind."

"Look." Kevin moved his gaze from the bookshelf directly in front of him to look Dean in the eyes, taking a time-out from his I'm-in-my-vynassa-and-not-listening-to-you bullshit. "Don't give me some speech about how we're in the bottom of the ninth and the shot clock is ticking. This can help me focus. Be more productive. My head will literally explode if I don't make some changes, and there will be brains everywhere, and you know that's a bitch to clean up." This was true. "So I'm eating and sleeping and I even found an old cello and got it tunned up."

Dean crossed his arms over his chest and watched Kevin refocus on the bookshelf, tip forward, and reach one hand to the ceiling. Okay, so hot dogs, jerky, and spam (although the dinner of champions) were probably not on the Epic Translation Diet. And, honestly, Kevin was looking better. He'd shaved, and the bruises under his eyes were starting to fade. Probably from the quality mattress.

Hell, if this would make Kevin less bitchy, Dean could get on-board.

To an extent.

Kind of.

Maybe not the cello part. Who brought a cello to a bunker? He should check that it wasn't cursed or something. The yoga mat too. That thing looked ancient. Where had he found it? Why would the men of letters bring it here unless it belonged in a magic evidence locker?

Kevin reversed his stance and Dean frowned.

"Where'd you learn yoga?"

"YouTube."

Dean's eyebrows rose. "You're learning yoga from YouTube."

"Where else am I going to learn?"

Not really less bitchy then. Clearly the yoga and Bach weren't working yet.

Kevin fumbled down into a really lazy plank and Dean couldn't watch anymore. With a shake of his head, he went to get coffee. (Epic Translation Diet approved, apparently.) He came back to the map table with a full mug and opened Sam's lap top to try to figure out what kind of monster takes tongues and leaves behind glitter. ("It's not _glitter_, Dean. It's chalcopyrite. Crystal shards. It must have been ground down or powdered." "So what? Someone's snorting new-age healing rocks, then sneezing it all over the victims?")

He tried to do research. He tried to ignore Kevin's huffing and puffing, the tension in his slumped shoulders, his poor alignment, and his refusal to commit to the lunge in his front leg. Disgraceful. One of these days, the kid would drive him up a wall. It was a sign of Dean's stellar mental health (thank you very much) that it hadn't happened already.

So Dean was doing less research and more scowling when Sam appeared with a stack of file folders, looking as if he'd been up for hours. He wore little ankle socks and kept his walk slightly slower than usual so his T-Rex footsteps didn't echo on the tile. In the bunker, he always looked a little uncertain, as if the ceilings weren't tall enough for him, even though they were. As if he were sweeping through a vampire nest in an abandoned creepy mansion, checking the corners with his eyes every time he entered a room.

Dean didn't get it. Wasn't there some lore about how giants didn't like living underground? Maybe it was something like that.

Sam paused when he saw Kevin, and his posture relaxed, little smile pulled its way free.

Of course Sam would encourage this shit.

"Morning," Dean said, pulling his coffee closer and refocusing on his research so he wouldn't have to look at either of them.

"Hey." Sam took a seat and shuffled through files. "So according to these records powdered chalcopyrite is an ingredient in several purification spells."

"Purification?"

"Cleansing the mind and body after acts of falsification, dishonesty, and slander," Sam quoted.

"And all four of them went on public rants just before they died."

Sam nodded. "The newspaper editorial. The fight in the grocery store parking lot..."

Kevin pressed his palms together and tried to balance on one foot, inching the other up his leg. A second later he dropped his hands to grab his ankle and pull it to his knee, barely keeping his balance. He wobbled, found some stability, and brought his hands back to heart center.

"Probably why their tongues were removed," Sam said. "Stops them from telling lies."

"Yeah. Sure. Move your damn foot, Kevin! You're gonna blow out your knee. Only tools hurt themselves doing fucking yoga. You want to be a tool? You want to have to tell people how you ended up on crutches? No! Foot above the knee or below it."

Kevin wobbled, looked down, then carefully shifted his foot three inches down his leg.

Dean nodded and turned back to find his brother's eyebrows hiked high on his forehead.

"What?"

"Did you just—"

"No."

"I think you—"

"No."

"It's just, I didn't know you were into that kind of thing."

Dean glared. "I'm not. It's just common sense. Knees don't bend that way."

Sam looked for a second like he was going to argue in his patronizing, college guy, nerd voice that—little known fact—knees actually do bend to the side if you just believe in yourself and drink a lot of tea. Instead he let it drop with a shake of his head and turned back to his files. "Did you find anything?"

Dean swiveled the laptop to show the first and only site he'd gotten around to clicking on. "Found this magic rock store on I-44 just outside of town. Jasmine's Jewel Emporium: home of all your shiny paperweight, cheap necklace, and serial killer supply needs."

"And you think they're supplying our killer?"

Dean shrugged. "No idea. But it's a place to start, and—Kevin! Counter stretch, man."

Kevin paused and checked his arm where he'd written the order of his practice, illustrated with stick person illustrations. Seriously? Dean wanted to bang his head against a wall. They needed to get the kid some full sized paper and a notebook, because he was way too used to writing crazy things on post-its and the wall and take out napkins and (apparently) his forearm. No wonder he was sucking so much.

Did the arm notes system work for him when he was in advanced placement?

Kevin backtracked into the right form and Dean huffed.

"So," he asked Sam, "road trip to the gem emporium?"

Sam took a second to stare at him like he'd grown a second head, but then pulled it together enough to reclaim his better-than-you attitude. "I don't know. This stuff isn't too hard to get. You can buy it for cheap on Amazon. In bulk."

Dean sunk back in his chair, almost irritated that his half assed research hadn't paid off. "Awesome."

"Maybe our next step is to find the next victim."

"That shouldn't be too hard. It's not like everyone and their dog lies constantly."

Sam grimaced, "I don't think _everyone_—"

"Oh, come on, Kevin! Get your shit together!"

"Dude!" Kevin snapped, his voice muffled from his spot crumpled on the floor. "Stop hassling me."

"Yeah, Dean," Sam said trying to smooth things over by _talking_. "Isn't yoga supposed to be, I don't know, calming? It's not in the spirit to shout so much."

"You see," Dean said. "That's why yoga sucks."

"This is supposed to be relaxing," Kevin bitched. "You're not relaxing."

"Just leave him alone," Sam said. "He's not bothering you."

"So I'm just supposed to what? Sit here and let him do it wrong?"

"Yes," Kevin said.

"How do you know he's doing it wrong?" Sam asked.

Dean rolled his eyes. "I picked up a few things. I did live with Lisa for _a year_, remember."

"I lived with a veterinarian," Sam said. "Doesn't mean I know how to treat heartworms."

There was a joke in there, but the best Dean could come up with was, "You have heartworms," and that wasn't the gold nugget he wanted.

Sam leaned forward, waiting for a story, and his sympathetic, listening face made Dean bristle all over. Like Sam wanted to have a heart to heart about how Ben was having serious anxiety issues at school, and Lisa decided yoga breathing exercises would help, and Ben (smart kid he is) wouldn't do it because it sucked, and Lisa said it wouldn't suck that bad because Dean was going to do it with him, and Dean had had a moment of thinking _Hell no_ before he caught Lisa's death glare that said _You need to have my back on this_ and Ben's unfair, hopeful face that said _Please please please please please_. And Dean had shrugged and said, "Yeah. Couldn't hurt."

Instead of any of that, Dean said, "So are we going to Missouri or what?"

Sam didn't like this answer, but Sam could go fuck himself. "Do we have a plan once we get there?"

"Sure. We go get our lie detector on. Look for someone standing in town square, shouting about how much his neighbor sucks."

Sam considered, which made sense because they didn't really have a better plan. Dean took this as agreement and slapped him on the shoulder before standing up to go pack.

He made it all the way to the doorway before stopping, swearing, and turning around to make a B-line for Kevin and his atrocious downward dog. The kid stiffened and made a noise like the beginning gurgle of _Oh God, don't hit me_, but Dean ignored him, planted the base of his palm on Kevin's lower back, and pressed. Down and back and precise. Kevin's heels sank towards the floor, his hips rising, his arms coming in line with his spine. Dean kept him in place for a beat to let the kid get over his shock, to let him realize that he was finally doing it right and he damned well better learn from it.

He shot Sam a preemptive "Shut up" over his shoulder as he left.


End file.
